LibGuides: We Need To Talk : The CROWN Act

What is the CROWN Act?

( Photo credit: www.theblackhairexperience.com )

The CROWN Act was created in 2019 by Dove and the CROWN Coalition, in partnership with then State Senator Holly J. Mitchell of California, to ensure protection against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles by extending statutory protection to hair texture and protective styles such as braids, locs, twists, and knots in the workplace and public schools.

CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.

New York was the second state to introduce the CROWN Act under the leadership of Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant, Northern Crown Heights) & Senator Jamaal Bailey (D-Bronx, Westchester). The states of New Jersey, Virginia, Colorado, Washington, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, Maine, Tennessee, & Massachusetts have also enacted the CROWN Act. Additional bills were signed in New Mexico, Nebraska, Oregon, Illinois, Louisiana, and Alaska that were inspired by The CROWN Act. In March 2021, the federal bill H.R 2116 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and S.888 was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Cory Booker. On March 18, 2022, the federal CROWN Act bill passed in the House of Representatives with a vote of 235 Yeas and 189 Nays.

On December 14, 2022, the federal bill was brought to the Senate floor for passage by unanimous consent. Unfortunately, the bill did not pass due to an objection brought by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). The federal CROWN Act will now need to be reintroduced in the 2023 legislative session.

Black Hair and the American Story

Why Do We Need Legislation About Hair?

Have You Ever Heard of the Tignon Laws?
In the 1700s, the Tignon Laws forced Black women in Louisiana to wear head wraps because their beautiful, elaborate hairstyles were considered a threat to the status quo.
How Natural Black Hair at Work Became a Civil Rights Issue
On the 59th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, U.S. courts are still divided about African Americans’ right to wear their natural hair in the workplace.
* Note (At the time of this article's publication, it was the 55th anniversary)
Personal Definitions of Professionalism Are Why A Hair Bias Bill Is On The Ballot
“Hair must be worn professionally.” This is one example of a workplace policy that, depending on how it’s enforced, [is up for interpretation]. Existing civil rights laws can be interpreted broadly to include things like hair, but competing court rulings have muddied how to handle specific bias against certain styles like afros, locs, braids, & cornrows which can be perceived as being less professional than straight hair.
Texas school staffers colored in black teen's haircut with a Sharpie, lawsuit claims
Staffers at a Texas junior high school colored in a black teen's fade haircut with a jet-black Sharpie to discipline him for violating the school dress code, according to a lawsuit filed by his parents.The boy, identified in the suit as J.T., was told he'd face in-school suspension for his hairstyle unless it was colored in with jet-black marker.
The untold story of wrestler Andrew Johnson’s dreadlocks: How the high school athlete endured his infamous haircut
The tale behind how one small town referee's interpretation of "natural" hair, not only rocked the nation, but left one young man reexamining his place in the world in a new and uberimpactful kind of way.

Hair Love

Selections From The Stacks

Sister style : the politics of appearance for black women political elites by Nadia E. Brown and Danielle Casarez
Call Number: EBook
ISBN: 0197540597
"In The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites we situate Black women's bodies, specifically their hair texture and skin tone to argue that phenotypic differences among Black women politicians directly impact for how they experience political office and how Black voters evaluate them.

The Scholarly Context of Hair Politics

Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics
Black women's hair has been used not only to exert political oppression and dominance, but also to resist alienation in the Americas. Drawing on studies of race and hair across multiple periods of Pan-American history, this article argues that in more ways than one, Black hair is, and has always been, political.
White Hair Only: Why the Concept of Immutability Must Be Expanded to Address Hair Discrimination Against Black Women in the Workplace
The judiciary has played a role in upholding legal principles that perpetuate hair discrimination, and as a result racial discrimination, in the workplace.This article focuses on the issue presented by the interpretation of immutability used in relation to racial discrimination claims and the blockade
it presents for Black workers, specifically Black women, who face hair discrimination in the workplace.

We Need To Talk : The CROWN Act

Our Panelists

What is the CROWN Act?

Black Hair and the American Story

Why Do We Need Legislation About Hair?

Hair Love

Selections From The Stacks

The Scholarly Context of Hair Politics

What Can You Do To Help?

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